Promise of tomorrow: Alaska Native Claims;

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Alaska Native Claims
THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW
by ROBERT PARKER/Editor
The ceiling is 1,000 feet. Mist hangs over the hills. Below lies the fishing village of Port Graham, 150 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. The single-prop four-seater descends between the hills, touches on the gravel runway, and taxies toward a man and a boy waiting at the clearing.
Port Graham is one of 200 native villages in Alaska, and its people are among the 76,000 Alaskan natives to receive money and land from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Passed by the US Congress in 1971, the act reimburses natives for aboriginal claims to land purchased from Russia a century ago.
This is the first visit to the village for Julie Dallas and Todd Resch, two young auditors from the Touche Ross Anchorage office. Their host is Jim La Belle, president of the village cor-poration established under ANCSA.
The nation's headlines have featured the oil discovered on Alaska's northern slope and the 798-mile pipeline being built to carry this oil to the ice-free port of Valdez. But equally significant to the economy of the state is nearly $1 billion and 40 million acres of land awarded to Alaska's natives by ANCSA, Some of
^gaifis; a background of fishing nets are three images of Port Graham. From top: a fishing boat circles the harbor on a gloomy day; three cousins, from left, Elmer and ]o-]o Tabios, with Kermit La Belle; rows of fishing boats are drydocked for the winter.
the money is to be distributed to each native; the balance will be retained in regional and village corporations owned by native shareholders.
Port Graham's population of 150 people earns its living from the sea, primarily salmon fishing that keeps its cannery busy six weeks a year. But many of its citizens, and a portion of the 60,000 natives (Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts) still living in Alaska, are caught in an economic trap. A modern economy and govern-mental influence have been forcing them to change in recent decades from a subsistence life style of hunt-ing and Ashing to a cash economy in which they must purchase material goods to satisfy new expectations. The issue strikes to the heart of their culture. As the caribou, moose, and salmon diminish, as the educated youth lose their subsistence skills, can—or should—the traditional way of life survive?
The main street of Port Graham is unpaved. Children splash in pud-dles. Behind them, the wooden houses are old and weather-beaten. Only the roar of a generator spreads the twentieth century through the trees. The mood is one of isolation, peace, and untapped potential.
"We 're catching up with Anchorage," Jim LaBelle tells the two auditors. "Five years ago, we didn't have electricity, water, or sewers. Now, we a/so have a new school, and phone lines are coming." Today, the challenge to native leaders like LaBelle is from economic forces that threaten to pre-empt the natives' control over their own future.
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